Are you interested in learning about a new, evidence-based preventive intervention that increases low-income fathersâ involvement with their children, strengthens couple relationships, and reduces parenting stress? Therapists who work directly with family systems and family agency administrators will learn about new evidence supporting the idea that preventive work with both parents in couples groups and focuses on the relationship between the parents can have lasting positive benefits for children. Some of the concepts/principles covered include: how to use a five-domain model of family risks and protective factors to improve family relationships; how to design a culturally-sensitive approach to couples group interventions mid-way between open-ended therapy and teaching conflict resolution skills; how to recruit low-income Mexican American, African American, and Caucasian families to participate in a relatively long-term intervention.
Philip A. Cowan, PhD and Carolyn Pape Cowan, PhD are clinical psychologists and professors Emeriti at University of California, Berkeley. The Cowans have evaluated two longitudinal preventive intervention studies in which they worked with mothers and fathers in couples groups - during the transition to parenthood or during the first child's transition to elementary school. They evaluated the long-term effects of working with the parents by following the parents and children for years after the interventions. A third intervention study funded by the California Office of Child Abuse Prevention is currently underway in which the Cowans are evaluating interventions to encourage the positive involvement of low-income fathers in their relationships with their young children and the mothers of their children - by working with fathers in groups for couples or groups for fathers. The results of the three studies support the notion that fostering couple relationship and co-parenting quality has benefits for mothers and fathers, their parenting effectiveness, and their children's development.
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